Isle Of Lox /Can one mistake reality for reality? Curated by Gioula Papadopoulou@ the Moscow Museum Opening: July 30th, 19.00 Zubovsky Boulevard 2/ RUSSIA
Can one mistake reality for reality?
Curated by Gioula Papadopoulou
Opening: July 30th, 19.00
Address: Moscow Museum, Zubovsky Boulevard, 2
Dates: August 1st – August 23rd
More info at http://now-after.org and (in Russian) at http://mosmuseum.ru/exhibitions/p/hudozhestvennyie-soobshhestva-moskvyi/
https://www.facebook.com/mosmuseum
Kind regards,
the festival’s team
www.festivalmiden.gr
www.facebook.com/festivalmiden
https://www.facebook.com/mosmuseum/app_212104595551052?ref=page_internal
Can one mistake reality for reality?
Curated by Gioula Papadopoulou
Opening: July 30th, 19.00
Address: Moscow Museum, Zubovsky Boulevard, 2
Dates: August 1st – August 23rd
More info at http://now-after.org and (in Russian) at http://mosmuseum.ru/exhibitions/p/hudozhestvennyie-soobshhestva-moskvyi/
https://www.facebook.com/mosmuseum
Kind regards,
the festival’s team
www.festivalmiden.gr
www.facebook.com/festivalmiden
https://www.facebook.com/mosmuseum/app_212104595551052?ref=page_internal
The title -and the thematic orientation- of the program derives from the dialogue between the …computer Hal 9000 and the Space Odyssey astronauts in “The conversation”, a subtly humorous conceptual video that opens the program. “Can one mistake reality for reality?” A seemingly naive and simple question that has so many answers and is a critical argument for all philosophy and aesthetics, triggers an infinite field of thought and discussion. Meanwhile, art creates its own reality/realities, sometimes through the most surrealistic or subversive means, reminding us that, after all, “reality” is an adventure of the mind. The program presents 16 videos that introduce us to diverse worlds, dreams, thoughts and nightmares, approaching reality with a surrealistic touch or creating poetic allegories and visual metaphors by reconstructing and transforming elements of everyday life.
1. Maximilian Schmötzer & Fabian Heitzhausen, The conversation, Germany 2011, 3.24
The video “The conversation” is a post dubbing of several scenes cut together from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is played in a loop and negotiates the question of what makes art into art. The computer Hal 9000, a supposedly omniscient artificial intelligence, tries to give the answer to the astronauts, but a solution seems impossible. Again and again, the discussion ends up at the beginning. The two male astronauts with the same female voice represent humanity’s insatiable quest for knowledge. The dialogue is inspired by Arthur C. Danto’s “The artworld”. Like Danto, Hal tries to explain the art-question with beds, constructed by Claes Oldenburg and Robert Rauschenberg.
2. Alessia Travaglini, Silenziosa-Mente, Italy 2011, 5.00
Alessia Travaglini uses animation -as a flexible instrument that allows her to give shape to many imaginative potentials- to narrate dreams and nightmares that we go through every day, in a sort of “metaphor of vision” that shows the shapes of the world beyond the realism. It’s like a series of visions and dreams that grow like a sensory journey, a kind of “Alice in Wonderland”, where the “wonderful” world is instead represented by the torments that the protagonist, “the red-haired girl”, lives in an invented space, populated by strange characters and symbolic figures that transfigure the current society and the forms of communication.
3. Alicja Rogalska, Untitled (Broniow Song), Poland 2011, 4.52
Untitled (Broniow Song) is a contemporary folk song written by Alicja Rogalska together with folk singing group Broniowianki from a small Polish village of Broniow. The area is known for its folk music and the highest unemployment in the country. The lyrics of the song reflect the socio-economic situation of the area, but can also be seen as a commentary about the situation of Polish countryside and the wider situation worldwide.
4. Mary Zygouri, Symbiosis, Italy 2007, 2.00
“Symbiosis” is the first video-performance of a trilogy entitled ZOOpoetics/ZOOpolitics. Mary Zygouri appears as a secretary typing away in her office which turns out to be in the center of a chicken coop. The furious flapping noises distract the concentrated typist but she keeps to her task despite the chaos of thousands of chattering birds. A short chronological note helps the viewer to interpret this weird scene; the work refers to an incident of the political life in Argentina: in 1946, Juan Peron after being elected as a leader, relieves Jorge Louis Borges of his duties as a librarian and appoints him inspector of poultry at the Buenos Aires public market in an attempt to suppress Borges’ reaction against the antidemocratic ways in which Peron ruled over the country.
The poultry farm is an allegory representing the processed methods of manipulating the psychic life, critical thought and political conscience. The performance took place at a poultry farm in Torino.
5. Anna Ampariotou, Scissor’s stories III, Greece 2011, 5.34
The work deals with diversity and individuality, visible or not, and the way these are experienced in social nets and structures that are degrading, but at the same time persistently preserve their conservative characteristics.
6. Hua Peng, Inhibited the time to live, China 2008, 4.41
In a period of post-industrialism, the sharp eye of a man and his camera records the apparent with the press of a button; much of the past is discarded like bad pictures taken. It is hard to tell the genuine from the substitute. Is it the photographs, the obscure words, or the unreliable memory? Relentlessly, time carries on in its own course, leaving human in a never-ending incubus.
7. Aleksandra Obradovic, X-treme 1, 2 & 3, Serbia 2011, 1.50
Domestic house spider celebrates the joy of life.
8. Shahar Marcus, The Curator, Israel 2011, 4.35
The video offers a glimpse “behind the scenes” of the art world and describes the art scene as a detached, elitist bubble. The work is using comic effects and is built as a Hollywood film industry trailer. The quick short scenes in fast rhythm editing are accompanied by a Hollywood style voice over narrating to tell the story of the revelation and the rise of the curator in the art world. The work suggests a wider look on issues of our contemporary culture like idolizing celebrities and the instant superstars that are being born every new day.
9. Hillerbrand+Magsamen, DIY Love Seat, USA 2011, 2.30
“DIY Love Seat” is a playful and experimental short video that reinterprets family and its identity. In this dark comedy a woman takes the family couch and cuts out a section with a chainsaw. The husband, in a very deadpan manner, takes duct tape and repairs the couch. This physical act brings them literally closer together -but perhaps not emotionally.
10. Mattias Härenstam, Closed Circuit (In the middle of Sweden), Sweden/Germany 2011,
3.01
The video shows a quiet residential street somewhere in Sweden. The constantly moving camera travels down the street, into a large pothole at the end, is been “swallowed” by a huge
chewing mouth and turns up on the same street again. This time the street is darker and the sky red. The camera goes down the street again, down the same pothole that this time leads to a giant intestine, which “we” are passed through until we are back on the street from the beginning and the loop starts over.
11. Gioula Papadopoulou, Ophelia x 2, Greece 2010, 2.00
Ophelia re-visited. Another kind of Ophelia.
12. Tina Willgren, The Polymoids, Sweden 2010, 2.51
Tina Willgren describes the concept of her video: “The idea for “The Polymoids” emerged when visiting vacant urban areas in Stockholm. In the middle of town, surrounded by a hectic city life there exist spots that seem to have escaped city planning. There is an abandoned railway track and pillar landscapes under bridges. Having a very special atmosphere about them, something spooky and unpredictable, distinctly different from the surrounding city emerges. Walking in these areas is like exploring unknown territories, one does not know what will show up behind the next corner. Lots of waste is lying around, sometimes carried away by the wind, and it feels as though a very special type of flora and fauna could develop here, where dead matter comes to life. I think about the video as a kind of a nature documentary, which take this special biotope as its theme.”
13. Yuliya Lanina, Birds and Bees, USA 2010, 2.46
Birds and Bees is a stop motion animation featuring a whimsical cast of characters drawn from Lanina’s paintings. It is about the mystery of birth and the duality of existence. Life affirms itself through both merriment and suffering, as malformed and interbred creatures dance in celebration of Nature, sexuality, and fertility.
14. Leyla Rodriguez & Cristian Straub, Isle Of Lox “The Face”, Germany 2010, 3.54
The artists note about “The Face”: “Marks the beginning of the travel mysteries. The coming out, of the black one. Walking on water. Mirror, mirror on the wall. FACE. Wall on the mirror, mirror. Water on the Walking. One blacks out of the coming. Mysteries travel to the beginning, marks „The Face“.”
15. Beate Hecher & Markus Keim, All lnclusive, Austria 2012, 8.00
The panoramic view of a hotel ruin in the Egyptian desert… the yesterday, that will no longer see the tomorrow… a depraved despot in the landscape in snorkeling gear… protests … screams … the report of a hotel manager about the suppty situation of the First World in Egypt.,. shots… an interrupted telephone connection… an apocalyptic colonial composition, whose perspective is the zero.
16. Christina Stratsiani, Dress, Greece 2011, 1.44
A dress-text that cannot fit… A person that is obsessively trying to wear the text, to “dress” in it. During the video we follow the obsessive attempts, the persistence and the entrapment in the dress-text.
Total duration: 60 min
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Video Art Festival Miden::
Festival Miden*, the first Greek video art festival presented in open public spaces, is an annual
video art & new media cultural event held in Kalamata, GR. It is an independent organization
founded, organized and curated by a team of contemporary Greek artists.
Since 2005, Festival Miden has been gradually established as one of the most successful and
interesting video art festivals in Greece and abroad and has been a significant point of cultural
exchange for Greek and international video art, creating an alternative, peripheral meeting point
for emerging and established video artists.
(*Miden means “zero” in Greek)
Info: www.festivalmiden.gr
info@festivalmiden.gr // festivalmiden@gmail.com